New Yorkers line up outside the Dessert Truck, which serves high-end treats such as crème brûlée.
A new generation of lunch trucks is hitting the streets. They serve high-end fare such as grass-fed beef hamburgers, escargot and crème brûlée. As they rove cities like Austin, New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles, they alert customers to their locations using Twitter and Facebook. Their owners include highly trained chefs and well-known restaurateurs.
We sampled the food at 10 lunch trucks around the country that serve gourmet fare, from braised skate cheeks to bread pudding. One thing we learned: If a truck is famous for a particular item or dish, order that -- and skip the rest. Here are the results of our coast-to-coast review.
A tasty offering from the Dessert Truck.
Joshua Henderson, 36, trained as a chef at the Culinary Institute of America and cooked at the Avalon Hotel in Beverly Hills. Today, he owns two lunch trucks that drive the streets of Seattle. Each truck (the Skillet) serves about 200 lunches every day, and Henderson says he grossed about $400,000 last year, his first year in business, with only one truck in operation. The only problem: "We go up against the stigma. We're trying to prove we're on a different level than a lunch truck," he says.
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Lunch trucks once represented the nadir of culinary achievement, conjuring up images of withered hot dogs and hygienically challenged kebabs. Today, even some chefs from Michelin-starred eateries are migrating into a sector of the food business that seems particularly well suited for a financial downturn. For would-be restaurateurs, launching a culinary truck requires far less start-up capital than a brick-and-mortar restaurant. At a time when consumers are cutting back on restaurant spending, a food truck serving inexpensive lunches and snacks can be an easier sell to diners.
It al sound very nice for the people in the chic cities of the country. What about Detroit? Are all the upscale places afraid of us? Just because the rest of the country thinks were down and out, doesn't mean it's true. We are getting back on our feet, slowly, but we're getting there. 
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